The Russ­ian com­pos­er Mod­est Mus­sorgsky (1839–1881) wins my ‘coolest composer’s name’ award, with hon­ourable men­tion to Ger­man com­pos­er Engel­bert Humperdinck (1854–1921) who of course is not to be con­fused with mel­low British pop singer Arnold Dorsey who used Engel­bert Humperdinck as a stage name. Mus­sorgsky was one of the “The Mighty Five” along­side Mily Bal­akirev, César Cui, Alexan­der Borodin, and (anoth­er con­tender for the cool name award) Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov. Togeth­er, these five fash­ioned a dis­tinct nation­al style of Russ­ian clas­si­cal music in the sec­ond half of the 19ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry.

Mussorgsky’s works were inspired by Russ­ian his­to­ry and folk­lore, such as his opera Boris Godunov (about the Tsar who ruled Rus­sia between 1598 and 1605), Night on Bald Moun­tain (a series of com­po­si­tions inspired by Russ­ian lit­er­ary works and leg­ends), and Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion. This lat­ter piece is a piano suite in ten move­ments, writ­ten in 1874, and inspired by an exhi­bi­tion of works by archi­tect and painter Vik­tor Hart­mann at the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Arts in Saint Peters­burg. Hart­mann was as devot­ed as Mus­sorgsky to mak­ing intrin­si­cal­ly Russ­ian art and the two had become firm friends. Each move­ment of the suite is based on an indi­vid­ual art­work.

Art crit­ic Vladimir Stasov described the piece as Mus­sorgsky “rov­ing through the exhi­bi­tion, now leisure­ly, now briskly in order to come close to a pic­ture that had attract­ed his atten­tion, and at times sad­ly, think­ing of his depart­ed friend.”

The com­po­si­tion has become a show­piece for vir­tu­oso pianists, but has also became wide­ly known from orches­tra­tions and arrange­ments pro­duced by oth­er com­posers, such as Mau­rice Rav­el’s 1922 adap­ta­tion for orches­tra. The excerpt below is the open­ing prom­e­nade from the Rav­el ver­sion, as played by the Nation­al Youth Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall, New York. This is anoth­er tune where I say “I bet you know it…”.

Inci­den­tal­ly, prog rock trio Emer­son Lake and Palmer did a ver­sion of Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, just as they did a ver­sion of anoth­er blog top­ic here, Aaron Copland’s Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.